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I'm sort-of leaving tech, but I've worked in web dev for 8 years, and this is the first I hear of Gutenberg. From what I understand, it's better WYSIWYG. Great

I'm sort-of leaving tech, but I've worked in web dev for 8 years, and this is the first I hear of Gutenberg. From what I understand, it's better WYSIWYG. Great, but we have entire essays demonstrating how WYSIWYG is garbage. Alright but people want WYSIWYG! To me, this seems like a manifestation of the limits inherent to the simplification of UI. The frontend needs complex information to be able to correctly produce a beautiful design. Ultimately, the user needs to be aware of the concepts (too complex, apparently), or the design needs to be automated and therefore simplistic. WYSIWYG is the unhappy compromise demonstrating that consistency begets complexity. If this dilemma really is unsolvable, then Wordpress is but one of iteration in a grand cycle of its victims. I worked mainly with Drupal, and the situation there isn't much better, they've simply opted for sophistication over usability.

andybak 8y ago
> we have entire essays demonstrating how WYSIWYG is garbage. I would dispute all of those essays. Explain to me what we do instead of WYSIWIG and if your answer is anything like Markdown then you've never observed real users. Hell - I hate markdown and I'm a developer. I do not understand the desire to trash WYSIWIG other than reverse Ludditism.
- spiderfarmer 8y ago
  The Markdown vs. WYSIWYG discussion goes along the same lines as the vim vs. Word discussion. You can discuss it, but real users in the target audiences of the products simply don't care about the alternative. To each his own.
  - _mrmnmly 8y ago
    good point. I've never met any client that would like to write in markdown though, but I love it, tbh. My most desirable feature of markdown editor is drag&drop images that turns automatically into `![img](xyz)` tags - I wish more editors offer such feature.
coldtea 8y ago
>From what I understand, it's better WYSIWYG. Great, but we have entire essays demonstrating how WYSIWYG is garbage. You can find an essay demonstrating everything you care for is bad. Engineering requires measurement and proof, not essays.
Kagerjay 8y ago
> Great, but we have entire essays demonstrating how WYSIWYG is garbage Markdown is great and all, I personally use it mostly for README docs and git tracking. But WYSIWYG is what most blog sites are embracing Examples (but not limited to) - Medium - Ghost → Ghost 2.0 - Webflow + Design tools - Notion + Notetaking tools - Premade website tools (WIX, squarespace, Shopify Page Builder, etc) are gaining ground over wordpress traditionally WYSIWYG has a learning curve associated with it, but it doesn't have to be complicated. Personally, I prefer GUI tools over non GUI counterparts anyhow. These include tools in atom/visual studio code for doing git commits / branching etc. People are more than willing to learn how to use a WYSIWYG interface if the value they get long term is worth it. Ideally, cost should be minimized (learning) and benefits maximized(building quick blog posts how they want). Blogs are exactly that though, you spend a little bit of time learning the framework, and spend a lot of time using it. The amount a user is willing to learn proportional depends how much they will use it long term. For a one off task, a user is not willing to spend as much time learning a WYSIWYG GUI tool, and would rather pick something more familiar like markdown or .txt. Examples include learning how to use a new video editing tool, with advanced feature sets (Adobe Premiere, etc) if you don't make videos often. Rather you would prefer learning a simpler tool instead (Adobe spark, etc) From research I've done the market is largely shifting towards WYISWYG and from a UX research standpoint, this makes sense. Getting exactly what you want lowers the barrier and confusion / expectations of what you receive. You can quote buzzfeed essays all day, but I always take research with a grain of salt unless (1) the author is reputable (2) it validates research and data I've observed from a number of various reputable sources / my own research. UX is just common sense at the end of the day ------------------------------------------------------------------ > The frontend needs complex information to be able to correctly produce a beautiful design Not necessarily true, just use a CSS framework and it simplifies a lot of the process. Take your pick with functional CSS like tailwinds, bootstrap, or just modify your own classes. WYISYWG just wraps things in classes as necessary I've looked at Gutenburg, it looks promising. I've spoken to a number of core devs from gutenburg. I don't really like the tinyMCE editor that much honestly, or the Jetpack installed wordpress.com instance. They both have issues. TinyMCE editor doesn't reflect proper nominal width for a blog at ~800px, so sometimes the results are skewed when previewed live Jetpack wordpress.com's editor is more closer to what optimal words per line / font-size / width to write should be. However, it has some serious flaws when using 3rd party plugins (such as adding prismJS code snippets) and its a pain to work with
wwweston 8y ago
This is a much underappreciated point, one I first came to realize when trying to train reasonably intelligent lay users working with some of the 1st and 2nd generation WYSIWYG web tools (Fusion, Dreamweaver, and heaven help us all Frontpage). Point-and-click interfaces really only provide some degree of friction-reduction. A user who can be effective still has to think in terms of layout tools and behavior and different properties of block and inline elements that can be set, even if they don't have the language to describe these things and don't map it to syntax. That last part is the effort saved -- they don't have to map it linguistically/formally and for some people or some limited design/display problem set, that's big savings. I suspect, however, that's a significantly smaller set of people and problems than the common wisdom might indicate (and definitely smaller than "universal") and one of the reasons many web publishing tools end up providing templates + limited display options inside content and still end up being more popular than Dreamweaver.

andybak 8y ago

> we have entire essays demonstrating how WYSIWYG is garbage. I would dispute all of those essays. Explain to me what we do instead of WYSIWIG and if your answer is anything like Markdown then you've never observed real users. Hell - I hate markdown and I'm a developer. I do not understand the desire to trash WYSIWIG other than reverse Ludditism.

spiderfarmer 8y ago
The Markdown vs. WYSIWYG discussion goes along the same lines as the vim vs. Word discussion. You can discuss it, but real users in the target audiences of the products simply don't care about the alternative. To each his own.
- _mrmnmly 8y ago
  good point. I've never met any client that would like to write in markdown though, but I love it, tbh. My most desirable feature of markdown editor is drag&drop images that turns automatically into `![img](xyz)` tags - I wish more editors offer such feature.

coldtea 8y ago

>From what I understand, it's better WYSIWYG. Great, but we have entire essays demonstrating how WYSIWYG is garbage. You can find an essay demonstrating everything you care for is bad. Engineering requires measurement and proof, not essays.

Kagerjay 8y ago

> Great, but we have entire essays demonstrating how WYSIWYG is garbage Markdown is great and all, I personally use it mostly for README docs and git tracking. But WYSIWYG is what most blog sites are embracing Examples (but not limited to) - Medium - Ghost → Ghost 2.0 - Webflow + Design tools - Notion + Notetaking tools - Premade website tools (WIX, squarespace, Shopify Page Builder, etc) are gaining ground over wordpress traditionally WYSIWYG has a learning curve associated with it, but it doesn't have to be complicated. Personally, I prefer GUI tools over non GUI counterparts anyhow. These include tools in atom/visual studio code for doing git commits / branching etc. People are more than willing to learn how to use a WYSIWYG interface if the value they get long term is worth it. Ideally, cost should be minimized (learning) and benefits maximized(building quick blog posts how they want). Blogs are exactly that though, you spend a little bit of time learning the framework, and spend a lot of time using it. The amount a user is willing to learn proportional depends how much they will use it long term. For a one off task, a user is not willing to spend as much time learning a WYSIWYG GUI tool, and would rather pick something more familiar like markdown or .txt. Examples include learning how to use a new video editing tool, with advanced feature sets (Adobe Premiere, etc) if you don't make videos often. Rather you would prefer learning a simpler tool instead (Adobe spark, etc) From research I've done the market is largely shifting towards WYISWYG and from a UX research standpoint, this makes sense. Getting exactly what you want lowers the barrier and confusion / expectations of what you receive. You can quote buzzfeed essays all day, but I always take research with a grain of salt unless (1) the author is reputable (2) it validates research and data I've observed from a number of various reputable sources / my own research. UX is just common sense at the end of the day ------------------------------------------------------------------ > The frontend needs complex information to be able to correctly produce a beautiful design Not necessarily true, just use a CSS framework and it simplifies a lot of the process. Take your pick with functional CSS like tailwinds, bootstrap, or just modify your own classes. WYISYWG just wraps things in classes as necessary I've looked at Gutenburg, it looks promising. I've spoken to a number of core devs from gutenburg. I don't really like the tinyMCE editor that much honestly, or the Jetpack installed wordpress.com instance. They both have issues. TinyMCE editor doesn't reflect proper nominal width for a blog at ~800px, so sometimes the results are skewed when previewed live Jetpack wordpress.com's editor is more closer to what optimal words per line / font-size / width to write should be. However, it has some serious flaws when using 3rd party plugins (such as adding prismJS code snippets) and its a pain to work with

wwweston 8y ago

This is a much underappreciated point, one I first came to realize when trying to train reasonably intelligent lay users working with some of the 1st and 2nd generation WYSIWYG web tools (Fusion, Dreamweaver, and heaven help us all Frontpage). Point-and-click interfaces really only provide some degree of friction-reduction. A user who can be effective still has to think in terms of layout tools and behavior and different properties of block and inline elements that can be set, even if they don't have the language to describe these things and don't map it to syntax. That last part is the effort saved -- they don't have to map it linguistically/formally and for some people or some limited design/display problem set, that's big savings. I suspect, however, that's a significantly smaller set of people and problems than the common wisdom might indicate (and definitely smaller than "universal") and one of the reasons many web publishing tools end up providing templates + limited display options inside content and still end up being more popular than Dreamweaver.